parts of the western tropical Continent when the slave trade was looked upon by all nations as a legitimate form of human activity. Every man's hand was against his neighbour's. No individual was safe. The whole place was mined with slavery. No less a person than the Governor of Mossamedes (southern Angola) who, like several of his compatriots, deplored and denounced the situation obtaining, declared as recently as March, 1912, that he found it impossible to discover a free man in that town even to serve in his own household. National inertia, political troubles and powerful vested interests were jointly responsible for this state of affairs.
During the quarter of a century preceding the Great War, slavery in Angola received a fresh external incentive. Some two hundred miles from the coast-line, a couple of volcanic islands thrust themselves out of the ocean. They are called San Thomé and Principe, and their total area is about 4,000 square miles. They enjoy a heavy rainfall and are admirably suited for tropical cultivation. Originally discovered by the Portuguese, they attained great prosperity during the "golden age" of the slave trade, the slaves on the sugar plantations being, of course, transported from the mainland. Their prosperity declined with the abolition of the Slave trade. It revived somewhat in the middle of last century, coffee taking the place of the sugar cane. But the profits derived from the cultivation of coffee gradually sank, while the demand for another and more valuable crop increased. This was cocoa, first introduced into San Thomé from Brazil in 1822. San Thomé and Principe were destined to become for a time the most important cocoa-producing centres in the world, until the natives of the Gold Coast built up a free industry on their own land, which eclipsed the Portuguese slave industry despite the great care lavished upon it and large sums of money invested in it. But at what a price in human lives and in human misery did San Thomé and Principe acquire their importance! And what a price is still paid in adult mortality, although the conditions of "recruiting" have wholly changed!
The discovery that a slave traffic was still in full swing between Angola and the "Cocoa Islands" came about in this wise. In the opening years of the present century about one-third of the cocoa produced in San Thomé
